Gardner Webb In Big South As Full Member?

[TheDude]

Not really football related since they're already a member of the BigSouth, but just got this email from a friend.

http://www.gwusports.com/story.asp?Region=&MarketId=&Market=&OrgId=20913&story=71403

[walliver]

It makes sense for GW. The Big South is much more compact than the Atlantic Sun, especially after they added Florida Gulf Coast University. They should save a lot of money in travel expenses.

[IaaScribe]

And Birmingham-Southern voted today to move to Division III ... so that opens another spot in the Big South.

[chattanoogamocs]

Holy Crap, I thought BSC dropping to DIII was a joke.

But hey, they are adding a DIII football team (according to AL.com)

[vmisport]

I'm surprised with Birmingham Southern College's decision to drop to D3. That is a very fine school which has produced great student/athletes with emphasis on academics as much if not more than athetics (while much of Div 1 has long since sold it soul and compromised its academic standards for more wins), and was extremely competitive in the Big South, especially in baseball, soccer, and basketball. It all seems to have come down to money, running deficits of 5Mill+/year, and that is without having to shell out money for football. By going back to D3, the school will reduce expenses significantly and be able to add a football program. D1 puts a lot of burden on smaller and private schools. Not having a large student body to saddle with fees and not having a large alumni base for support of athletics. I wish them well. But the Big South does add G-W for all sports, and overall reduces travel expenses with this trade.

[IaaScribe]

VMIsport: good take. I think the Big South schools will miss BSC from a competitive standpoint. They bring a lot to the field in a lot of sports (baseball and men's hoop especially, this week's showing in Conway notwithstanding).

From a travel standpoint, the rest of the conference will be pretty happy to see BSC go. I can only speak from my experience of covering Liberty, but I know that BSC was the only fly trip for basketball/volleyball/soccer, etc. And for baseball/softball, it was an 11-hour bus trip. I'm sure the experience was the same at VMI and Radford.

[vmisport]

Birmingham-Southern did set an example for what college athletics should be about.....what the priorities should be.......to compete without compromising academic standards (and they competed very successfully). I would like to see more of this kind of example in Division 1 instead of it retreating back to Division 3 where it is obviously more prevalent.